Flooring

Shopping for flooring can be a very confusing and frustrating process for a consumer. When you purchase flooring once every 10-15 years (or longer) product knowledge is hard to keep up with because of industry changes and improvements. With the internet knowledge base available, you can do some preliminary homework to learn the differences between the various types of flooring. Be careful with offers of free installation or pad – someone is going to pay for that installer and pad and it will be you with the flooring products being significantly overpriced. If you really think it’s free, then you’ve been trapped.

Some tips when self estimating: don’t underestimate – use the bottom line

Many people try to estimate their project cost by measuring the square footage of a room or rooms and heading to the nearest home improvement store. At these stores, most flooring is advertised by the square foot because that’s less intimidating than by the square yard (as we do). That’s all well and good but using net square footage is misleading – e.g. a 10 ft x 10 ft room is 100 square feet but takes a minimum of 120 square feet of carpet to do the job because carpets are made primarily in a 12 ft width – that 20% more square footage that you may have thought. Typically there is a waste factor of anywhere from 8% to 20% in carpet (less in hard floor products) as seen in this example. If you want to compare Carpet Den prices to theirs, do the math: SQ FT price X 9 X 1.0715 (tax) = out-the-door SY price.

Stores that don’t provide installation for their flooring products must charge you sales tax (7.15% in most areas) on the retail price of the all flooring (not included in the advertised price). Carpet Den pays 7.275% Minnesota Use Tax (Hennepin County rate) on the wholesale cost of the carpet (not the retail) which is included in the price we quote. Remember, always look at the service you get and the bottom line before you make a decision.